These recommendations stem from the report: Adopting Cloud Services at NC State: Guidelines and Considerations

IT governance should charge a group to provide ongoing cloud guidance.

• This report is a beginning, not an end.
• We recommend that IT governance charge a group to maintain and update these recommendations on a regular basis, to consolidate online documentation related to cloud services on campus, and to assist campus units and users with understanding and applying the guidelines.

IT governance should make implementing a service catalog a priority.

• In developing this report, it has become apparent that there is a critical need for a campus IT service catalog. Nearly every group that worked on a section of this report independently identified this need.
• A service catalog is necessary to enable campus users to make good decisions about cloud services. They need to be able to easily discover whether a similar service is already available, and how much a service costs. It’s important for them to know whether support is available, and from whom. The university can benefit from volume discounts in many cases – but this is not possible if users and units don’t know that a service is already available somewhere on campus. IT and university unit management need to be able to identify duplication of services. A successful service catalog will require broad campus participation in its development and maintenance.
• This could include a cross-campus project to develop an initial version that will meet the basic needs of all campus units, possibly in ServiceNow.
• Timeliness is important; as cloud services proliferate on campus, the effective and efficient use of resources depends on this functionality.
• OIT Software Licensing Management should be given the responsibility of maintaining and publishing a list of cloud services that have received approval for acquisition by campus units

IT governance should set a cloud strategy for NC State.

• IT governance should make some broad strategic decisions about the adoption and use of cloud services.
• We recommend adopting a strategy of evaluating cloud, on-premises solutions, or a combination, for any project, rather than choosing a “cloud first” strategy for IT capital investments at NC State.

IT governance should be a source for communication for cloud issues.

• IT governance should communicate cloud guidelines and strategy to campus, and be a resource for sharing information about cloud services being considered and implemented on campus.
• We recommend that IT governance develop a communication plan for sharing information about cloud services beyond the information in a service catalog, including this report.